Fridays, dreams and a Harry Potter schoolbag

Zahid Farooq, 17, was killed on 5 February 2010 at Nishat when BSF troopers fired at him while he was playing cricket with his friends.
Zahid would turn his room into a playing field when his friends would come to see him. “Whatever they would do, we would never use a harsh word for him or his friends. He was our only son,” says Zahid’s mother Parveena.
For Parveena, Fridays bring the tragedy of Zahid’s loss back to her–in real life and in dreams. Parveena says Zahid often appears in her dreams on Friday nights. Zahid was killed on Friday. “Whenever Friday sermons begin in any mosque my whole body trembles with fear.
“I used to weep a lot after we lost Zahid,” she says. Then a relative came over and told her that he saw Zahid in a dream telling him to “tell my mother to stop weeping for me because here they aren’t allowing me to offer Namaz.” “Since then I don’t weep,” she says. “But how can a mother bear the loss of her only son?”
After Zahid’s death all his belongings were locked away from sight-from his computer to clothes. “The only things we have are his coat, pants and a schoolbag still full of books.” Zahid’s sister has stored these things away. She was reluctant to show his brother’s belongings. Parveena says Zahid was a sober boy, “but whenever anyone abused him, he would get furious and it was difficult to control him.” She says the military personnel had abused him before shooting him dead.